A Password Manager Saves More Than Just Your Passwords

A password manager, which remembers and protects your account logins, can also help you keep your personal and private information secure. That’s good news and another reason to get a password manager if you don’t have one already. Nearly every cybersecurity expert recommends that consumers be cautious and smart about their passwords and consider using a password manager. They do that because most people are careless about password hygiene and management. A password manager account can help common password problems disappear quickly and easily. Better still, it can do more than that. While a password manager securely and conveniently stores, protects, and retrieves your passwords, it can also digitally and safely store important documents, account numbers, personal medical files, and more. Take a look. Would you rather remember 50 passwords or just one? That’s at the heart of the reason for using a password manager. Because if you managed all your passwords with a password manager, that’s all you’d need to remember. That one password is called the “master password.” It’s the combination, so to speak, to your personal and private password vault—it opens the password manager program/app. That’s where all the contents are—your accounts, usernames, and passwords. So that you know, you feed the passwords into your password manager. It only knows what you store in it. You can protect all your passwords or just some of them. The program itself doesn’t know your master password. Only you do, and those you share it with. Here’s how it works: Convenience and safety are what password managers were designed for. As mentioned earlier, as we become password weary, we lose focus on making sure we’re password savvy. It’s even more basic than that—we tend to think we’re the only one who knows a password and so our account is safe. That’s the primary reason people use simple passwords, like “password,” “abcd123,” or their pet’s names. Hackers love it because they can run through thousands of simple passwords in seconds. Here’s what a password manager can do: Let’s look at the benefits of a password manager practically, one that might convince you to get one and start using it. 1] You get an email from a financial institution informing you that they have been a victim of a data breach, months after it was first discovered. A password manager will alert you to any instance where an account username, password, or both have shown up in a data breach, allowing you to make changes immediately. 2] You have a “smart” system linked to your WIFI to water your lawn and plants. A power outage or other occurrence knocks it offline, and you need to reset the system. You wrote down the password for the account, but now you can’t find it, and the company is hard to reach. Your system is down for the count. With your password saved in your password manager, the correct password is retrievable in seconds, and you’re up and running in a flash. 3] You go to your bank’s website to pay your credit card bill. You key in your username correctly, but you make a mistake when you enter your password. It says “not recognized.” You try it again, but it says the same thing. You key it in once more, not realizing you’re making the same typo, once again.  Too late! You’re locked out of your account and must call your bank to reset your password! With a password manager, your passwords will be filled in automatically and correctly the first time. Think of a password manager as a safety deposit box or vault for your passwords and other digital information. It allows you to store your passwords and other digital files that you (or a loved one) may need someday. On our WhatIsMyIPAddress.com website, you’ll find an article on password manager basics with a few recommendations. It’s an excellent overview of what a password manager can do. A few of the top password managers include the following: Plus, with a quick search on your favorite search engine, you can find multiple third-party reviews and several tutorials on how to use most of them. Although password manager companies all claim their products are easy to use, they’re certainly not as simple as you’d like. If you can, find a friend or family member who uses one and ask them for a recommendation or advice. You might even ask them to help you through the setup process, if you trust them. Finally, keep this in mind: Using a password manager is just one way to protect your accounts from cybercriminals looking to steal your money and identity. For more information on improving your account security, see the articles and podcast episodes at our Learning Center.